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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23668684">His Love Like A Beacon</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Unosarta/pseuds/Unosarta'>Unosarta</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Avengers (Comics), Marvel (Comics), Marvel 616</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Avengers Vol. 5 (2013), Confessions, Happy Ending, Incursions (Marvel), M/M</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-04-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-04-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-03 00:54:21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,444</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23668684</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Unosarta/pseuds/Unosarta</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>The Uni-Power takes over Tamara's body once again. Tony is hurt and Steve has a heart to heart with the universe.</p>
<p>A re-imagining of the scene in Tamara's diner in Avengers Vol. 5 #44. What would Steve think if someone told him that he was life, and Tony was death?</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Steve Rogers/Tony Stark</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>9</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>65</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>His Love Like A Beacon</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“You are life, and he is death.”</p>
<p>When she says it to him, when he hears the words on Tamara’s lips, he laughs. They’re sitting in her diner, Tony unconscious in his arms, but somehow Steve isn’t afraid.</p>
<p>“Why do you laugh, Steven Rogers.”</p>
<p>She’s asking him but surely she must know. Maybe this is some kind of play and she’s waiting for him to give his lines. Was this all rehearsed, without his knowing? He hates feeling like this, like there’s a great big joke he hasn’t been let in on.</p>
<p>Like he’s stuck seventy years displaced, and every shape and shadow has moved on without him.</p>
<p>He can feel the weight of her presence on his mind, blanketing his thoughts, compelling him to speak true. It’s a heady, frightening feeling, especially with Tony in his arms and so much unspoken between them.</p>
<p>“Have you been talking to Tony, then?” He asks, not sure if he’s going to get an answer. </p>
<p>“Of course not.” Her voice is just as even as it always is, but Steve doesn’t trust the veneer of calm after the way she attacked Tony earlier.</p>
<p>He misses Tamara, he thinks dimly, like his thoughts are traveling at light speed from the sun. That comparison is probably more what Tony would be making right now. Eight minutes per leg of the journey, he’d read in one of the sci fi books Tony used to love lending him. </p>
<p>He misses Tony more than Tamara, but he would never admit it to himself. In the space between his thoughts, though, he can feel it. The ache in his chest. Tony’s shoulders in his hands, his blood on the floor.</p>
<p>They’re so close, but they’ve never felt further apart.</p>
<p>“Because that’s just what he’d say,” Steve says, word by word, waiting for his thoughts to catch up to his body. “He’d say that I’m life and he’s death and that’s why he doesn’t deserve me.” <em>Why he doesn’t love me.</em></p>
<p>Before the Universe can continue this play of theirs, this choreography that Steve isn’t aware of dancing, he continues.</p>
<p>“And he’d be wrong. I know him better than he knows himself. Better than you know him.”</p>
<p>“Illuminate my ignorance, Steven Rogers.”</p>
<p>The voice of Captain Universe is deep, booming, and strangely echoing in the diner despite the shattered windows. Only the barest hint of Tamara comes through, a scared voice under 1.5 x 1053 kilograms of mass.</p>
<p>“Sure, I might say that too if I were pissed at him.” Steve tries to think of a time in recent memory when he hasn’t been pissed at Tony. Back when they were making the Avenger’s Machine, spoke by spoke, and it felt like maybe hope was something he could hold in his hands.</p>
<p>“But when my head is clear, and I look at him,” he can’t stop himself from looking down at Tony, bruised and beaten. “All I can see is light. Tony’s the sun. Without him, I would have died a long time ago.”</p>
<p>Captain Universe doesn’t interrupt, and he’s grateful. Was this part of her plan for him? Is she waiting for the right moment to strike? Are these the words she wants to hear?</p>
<p>But he doesn’t understand her face, her body, or her thoughts. So he keeps speaking.</p>
<p>“Tony would tell you that everything he touches withers, but that’s only because he can’t see what joy he’s given us. Given me.</p>
<p>“When you’re as bright as Tony is, sometimes it can be hard to see what is happening right next to you.” His fingers stroke over Tony’s hands, not sure who he’s trying to comfort: Tony or himself </p>
<p>“And when you’re so bright, sometimes everything can look like shadows.”</p>
<p>He knows. He knows that Tony has been through so much badness. So much that Steve couldn’t be there for, and so much that he <em>had</em> been there for but couldn’t stop.</p>
<p>“When your eyes are looking so far ahead and so far away, you get lost in the place that you haven’t reached yet.” Steve is surprised at his own words. Is this him speaking, or Captain Universe pulling these thoughts out of him?</p>
<p>The Universe opens her mouth and closes it again. It is perhaps the most human thing he’s seen her do tonight. He wonders if Tamara is fighting to get through, fighting to say something. Or is the Universe just that lost for words?</p>
<p>“You love him.” She says after a moment.</p>
<p>Steve laughs. “Of course I love him. How could I do anything but love Tony Stark.”</p>
<p>“He killed you. He lied to you. He tore out your memories.” She says it not as an accusation, but as flat statements of fact.</p>
<p>Steve shrugs. “And yet.” </p>
<p>The Universe sits down where she’s standing, in the booth in front of Steve, harder than he’d expected. She looks tired, if that’s possible for a Universe to feel. Her hands go to her eyes and gently rub at the galaxies there, slowly try to push the stars back into alignment.</p>
<p>Steve’s been there before.</p>
<p>“It’s like. Sometimes, the people you love hurt you. They don’t mean it, probably. And you hurt them too. And sometimes the hurt is too much, and you can’t be with them, even if you love them.</p>
<p>“But it’s never been too much with Tony. Even when I was mad at him, it was never too much. I never stopped wanting him, wanting to be with him. Wanting him to know how wonderful he is.</p>
<p>“That‘s the problem with being so bright. You can’t see yourself as you truly are; the light overwhelms you. And it was like that for me too; I would look at him and I couldn’t know what I saw. I was afraid that he was becoming something strange, something that couldn’t love me like I loved him.”</p>
<p>The Universe has put away all pretense of hiding what she feels and drops her face into her hands. Steve continues anyway.</p>
<p>“I was afraid, so I hurt him.” He says it matter of factly, as if he didn’t feel crippled with guilt for what he’d done. “I’ve never been much good at trusting people, even when I should have trusted Tony.</p>
<p>“But once you’re away from the light, a little less blinded by it, you can see him with clear eyes. Tony was changing, but I wasn’t losing him. Change is natural. Change isn’t the end. I wish I could have seen that sooner.” He sounds so tired, in his own ears.</p>
<p>“I don’t…” the Universe begins, her voice hoarse. “I don’t want to die.”</p>
<p>Tears fall from her face, droplets of dark matter and interstellar gas, and supernova on the floor of the diner.</p>
<p>“That’s the thing though, isn’t it. That’s what Tony was always so afraid of too.”</p>
<p>Steve’s fingers, drawing slow circles on Tony’s hands, feel a flutter of a pulse before his thoughts, like ice floes, drift onto the knowledge that Tony is alive in his arms.</p>
<p>“I’ve faced death so many times,” he laughs, his voice lighter than he feels like it should be. “But death never stopped me. It sure as hell never stopped Tony. I think death is a transformation, not a stopping point. Even when we all will cease to be, something else will replace us, if we let it.</p>
<p>“And maybe that something else will have someone as beautiful as Tony. Maybe that something else will have someone who will strive to treat him right. Maybe they’ll have something we never did.”</p>
<p>The Universe draws in a deep and shaking breath.</p>
<p>“But I’ll never regret loving him. I’ll regret fighting him, pushing him, or not taking care of him.” He feels Tony stir in his hands, hears his breath and sees the blinking of his eyes, but his thoughts have not caught up yet. </p>
<p>“But never loving him. No matter what happens, never loving him.”</p>
<p>The Universe looks up now, her eyes spiraling and unfurling and collapsing. She looks lost.</p>
<p>“What will happen to me when I die, Steven Rogers?”</p>
<p>“I don’t know.”</p>
<p>“What will happen to you when you die, Steven Rogers.”</p>
<p>Steve smiles softly. Her eyes are dense with emotion, like neutron stars, and he wants so very badly to give her a hug, as if that might reassure her.</p>
<p>“I don’t know. It’s the not knowing that frightens you, isn’t it?”</p>
<p>She nods wordlessly.</p>
<p>“I can’t know what will happen when either of us die. But I can know what has happened while we lived. And there was joy and beauty here, in our lives. In your life.”</p>
<p>“Is that enough, Steven Rogers?” Her voice is pleading, the first time any of her words have sounded like questions and not demands.</p>
<p>“It’s enough.”</p>
<p>“Tell me. Tell if something happy and beautiful, Steven Rogers. Help me remember.” Her voice is barely a whisper. “Please.”</p>
<p>Steve nods. “The first time I met Tony, I thought he was a robot. And I remember thinking that there was no way this was the future, if Mr. Stark's robot was less convincing than Jim had been.</p>
<p>“But when they let me onto the team, and into their home, I didn’t care if it was the future or not. Someone cared about me, enough to trust me. Enough to give me something I needed so very, very badly.</p>
<p>“He didn’t have to. He could have gotten me my own place, or could have let me live there but not welcomed me like he did. But the thing about Tony is that giving someone something so precious isn’t even a question to him. He’ll do it like it’s instinct.</p>
<p>“He made me want to live. He made me think that living might be worth it, when death was so inviting.”</p>
<p>Shooting stars streak down her face as the Universe nods.</p>
<p>There is a long pause before she speaks again. “It was an honor knowing you, Steven Rogers. Please take care, in our final days.”</p>
<p>He realizes distantly that Tony is alive and awake and in his arms with his eyes open. Tony makes an indignant sound.</p>
<p>“We’re not gonna let you die, not that easily.”</p>
<p>Steve throws his hands up in the air and Tony falls back against his chest with a yelp. That was so Tony, come to the completely wrong conclusion right at the end of the discussion without listening to anything Steve was saying.</p>
<p>The Universe smiles shakily, the thin arm of her lip lifting ruefully up her face. “I see what you meant, Steven Rogers. He is stubborn, and unyielding, and desperately caring. He wants to save everyone, but only knows how to sacrifice himself. And you love him.”</p>
<p>They were all facts, as she was saying them, but only at the last one did Tony startle, his shoulders twisting against Steve’s stomach, looking up at him with wide eyes.</p>
<p>Steve meets his gaze and nods. </p>
<p>“I don’t know what will happen to us when this is over, but I know one thing: Tony’s never gonna stop trying to make everything better - even just a fraction - than it was before. And I’m never gonna stop loving him.”</p>
<p>Tony’s eyes are so, so wide, so wide that Steve is a little worried that Tony’s sudden resuscitation might signal a heart attack, but before his thoughts come back around from the sun and reach his brain, Tony is grabbing Steve’s collar and surging up to kiss him.</p>
<p>Their noses bump and their teeth clack together and it’s awkward and a little desperate, but once Tony has his knees under him and isn’t clinging on to him for dear life, he smiles at Steve. And Steve smiles back.</p>
<p>He would put up with awkward kisses forever, if it meant he never had to stop kissing Tony.</p>
<p>When Tony leans in again, it’s slow and careful. Tony’s lips are parted and his eyes are lidded and he looks so beautiful. Steve doesn’t want to stop looking at Tony, but as he sighs into the kiss and opens his mouth, he can’t bear to feel anything but Tony’s mouth and Tony’s tongue.</p>
<p>He’s thought about this a lot, about how this might go, but his thoughts haven’t even reached the moon’s periapsis yet and so he lets himself focus on the sensation of it.</p>
<p>When they pull apart, Tony’s eyes are glazed with pleasure and he looks like he’s about to pull Steve apart with his teeth.</p>
<p>The Universe coughs politely, and Tony looks like he’s going to mouth off to her, or maybe flip her off, but she’s smiling at them.</p>
<p>“Thank you for showing me something happy and beautiful.” She looks sheepishly at Tony. “I am sorry for attempting to kill you, Anthony Stark. It was wrong of me to blame you. I hope you will forgive me.”</p>
<p>Tony turns his head to look at her, his eyes a little dazed, but when he looks back at Steve he’s squinting accusatorily. Steve laughs and combs his fingers through the hair at the base of Tony’s neck. <em>Later</em>, he mouths.</p>
<p>“I will leave you two to your devices, but I must keep Ms. Devoux for a while longer. There are things I need to do still, while I have time.”</p>
<p>Steve nods and Tony shrugs. “Suit yourself, I guess, not like we can really stop you,” Tony says, casually.</p>
<p>“Nor would we. Take care, and please return Tamara in one piece.”</p>
<p>In a moment, the Universe is gone. The windows are as whole as they were when Steve and Tony stepped into the diner earlier that evening, and Tony’s body is repaired. Tony’s still straddling Steve’s thighs, a little bit dazed and a little bit annoyed.</p>
<p>Steve can’t keep himself from smiling as he looks Tony in the face. They’ll weather this together, they’ll work together. He isn’t life and Tony isn’t death; they’re just two people who’ve made a lot of mistakes.</p>
<p>He holds Tony’s hand in his, and Tony seems to come back down from wherever he was looking. Like he’s focused the spotlight of his attention on Steve, instead of whatever peril he thought faced them in the future.</p>
<p>“Is that all it takes?” He asks without thinking.</p>
<p>“Is what all it takes?”</p>
<p>“Is holding your hand all it takes to keep your head here with me, and not a million miles away?”</p>
<p>Tony smiles, his breath catching for a second. “Yeah it’s a good start. You wanna tell me you love me again, I bet that’ll help too.”</p>
<p>Steve doesn’t hesitate even one moment. “I love you, Tony.”</p>
<p>“I love you too, Steve.”</p>
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